Tangled Bank #102

Welcome to the latest issue of The Tangled Bank, the blog carnival dedicated to the world of biology, medicine, natural history…and Sarah Silverman.

We’re all getting older. And as we get older, we lose the ability to hear some frequencies. Diane Kelly of Science Made Cool offers Is That…A Dog Whistle? – a tale of a test that lets you know just how much damage you did to your hearing back in your clubbing days…or will do when you finally finish grad school and are able to emerge onto the social scene.

Ed Yong at Not Exactly Rocket Science has a two part post: Punishing slackers and do-gooders and Winners don’t punish: “Punishing slackers Part 2”. And, quite honestly, these are a compelling read. Ed is one of the best writers in the world of science blogging, and this pair of stories doesn’t disappoint. But even if they were badly written, they would still be fascinating.

PalMD recently joined the Brothers Hoofnagle at the denialism blog. He has a post entitled Malawi to curb fake AIDS healers. It’s a positive move by the government of Malawi all the more given the truly horrible cures that these fake AIDS healers are prescribing.

In a post that ties together Sarah Silverman, PZ’s octopus babies and gender differences between men and women in comedy, neuromotor control of smiling, and psychology with Japanese culture (and far more impressively, does so in a way that actually makes sense), Podblack Cat of PodBlack Blog: talks about what it’s like to be the Sarah Silverman Of Skepticism.

Take a moment and head over to the Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog. The entries for The First Great Agro.biodiver.se Competition are in, and your votes are needed to help pick the best video related to agricultural biodiversity. So head over to Clash of Titans — You Pick The Winner (the finalists are pretty cool).

Since every movie needs a prequel these days, Russell Seitz of ADAMANT supplies one for everyone’s favourite creationist propaganda flick in: Expelled: The Prequel. And onto an equally pleasant (though more easily correctable problem) Archaeozoology has an informative post entitled Know Your Pathology: Cleft Palate.

[That reminds me – I need to interrupt at this point with a public service announcement: the following posts consist of sharp brains – brain-eating zombies beware: they will do horrible things to the roof of your mouth]

Gregory Kellett at Sharp Brains talks about Relaxing for your Brain’s Sake. Apparently, experiencing excessive chronic, long-term stress is bad for the brain. Just great – now when I’m stressed I’ll have something else to stress about – the fact that the stress is bad for my brain. Also at Sharp Brains, Shannon Moffett talks about Sleep, Tetris, Memory and the Brain. Apparently, after playing Tetris all night, you’re supposed to get some sleep. That way, you’ll be better able to learn from your experience. (Apparently it applies to other skills as well…go read the post, it’s actually a lot more interesting that reading my inane rambling.)

Continuing at Sharp Brains, Pascale Michelon gives you Brain Teaser: Boost your visuospatial skills. Not only can you an exercise to boost your visuospatial skills, you can also learn what visuospatial skills are. And to round off all things sharp and brainy, John Medina gives you Brain Rules: science and practice, which introduces you to 12 things we know about how the brain works.

[And now continuing with the zombie-safe posts]

Mike at 10,000 birds delves into Striped Basilisk Lizard Lore; the Stripes Basilisk is one of the four Basilisk Lizards commonly known as the ‘Jesus Lizard’ because of the habit of turning water into wine umm, feeding the multitudes, no, overturning the money lenders tables in the temple…well, something like that. Scott Sherrill-Mix of Dammit Jim! addresses the question: When Do Leatherback Turtles Migrate South? (No one told me that you were allowed to blog about your own publications!)

Transitioning from organismal biology to gene stuff Barn Owl at Guadalupe Storm-Petrel has a post entitled Cream, No Sugar: Taking AIM at Pigment Dilution in Horses which talks about genes that affect colour in fish, mice and horses. Very cool stuff. Joe Dunckley at cotch.net is dissects a claim that epigenetics poses a problem for the “neo-Darwinian” view of evolution in Evelyn Fox Keller on genes, evolution, and epigenetics.

Finally, Andre of Biocurious has a post entitled Fluorescence Nanoscopy Just Keeps Getting Better. He starts off by saying “If you’ve been following the development of optical microscopy at all…” Developments? You mean there’s more to microscopy than choosing between the 4x, 10x and 40x objective lenses? Turns out that there is. So if you’re like me and have major deficiencies in your knowledge of light microscopy, this article is a must read…after all, you need to be able to come up with more than just a blank look the next time the subject of fluorescence nanonscopy comes up at a cocktail party.

Thanks for dropping by. The next edition of the Tangled Bank will be at rENNISance woman on April 16. Be sure to send your next round of submissions to host@tangledbank.net.

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